Thursday, May 11, 2017

Tomorrow I will be embarking on a road trip. I can't remember the last time I travelled anywhere physically. If I'm being honest, everyone asking me if I'm ready for the trip makes me feel unprepared. I will also admit that as I type this, I have yet to pack.

This week I have been working in construction. Or deconstruction, I suppose. I was hired as a helping hand to tear something down. It had been built poorly, apparently, and was very long not in use, covered in all manner of discarded and disregarded items. A dumping ground on top of a lost space. It was interesting, unearthing the mysteries there, and even more so to finally begin to get at the miserable undercarriage. Dangerously rickety and half-fallen over, and yet, when the crowbars and hammers and in the end, chainsaws, went to work, the fixture proved mightily fastened to the world. The whole thing reminded me of a number of stubborn old people I've known. At one point in the process, a large pile of steel had to be moved from its tattered pile to a nearby dumpster. It took me a sweaty hour, and somewhere through the process, I found the following sentence.

That summer, I became acquainted with steel.

I had to bleed for it, all the narrow swipes and near misses that tore my clothes notwithstanding, and even in the blazing heat it seemed worth it. A few hundred ordeals like this, I thought to myself, and I might have a few pages of a story I will always be proud of.

On that note, the glacier has shifted in regards to the revisions I submitted last fall. I'm not complaining. It was nice to know that progress was getting made. I am still very interested in seeing what my first published book might be able to do with an older, more seasoned me steering it. I still love the story, and think others will love it, too. I'm also looking into self-publishing my pulp novella, and testing the waters of audio books, simultaneously. I've done some research, and I think it would work well, especially with some of the changes I plan on attempting to how that process seems to work.

On the other hand, there is the one story I started which is dead in the water. I think about it, and settle my spirit upon it, and there is no resonance at all. I wanted to finish it, and there are plenty of excuses ready at hand as to why I never will, but I think the foundational truth is that I only loved it fleetingly. I'm disappointed, but I hope something will come of the initial push I made putting words to it.

So, in short, this update is like all the other updates. The mountain taketh and the mountain giveth. Being as worn down as I have been this week has provided some new perspective, about how to measure a well in darkness, and the strength of old, dying things.